Robert Macfarlane on walking

The story of Hansel and Gretel being led into the wood, dropping a trail of stones behind them and finding their way back home is one of the oldest and best-known stories in the world.

It’s a story about danger, ingenuity and discovery.

It’s archetypal, and it’s an idea that has been beautifully recreated in a very sophisticated literary and historical sense by the celebrated British travel writer Robert Macfarlane.

Robert Macfarlane’s book The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot is the third in a loose trilogy about landscape and the human heart.

In it, Robert Macfarlane travels the ancient walking tracks of Britain: paths such as the Broomway, a passage of sand and mud flats on the Essex coastline that connects the mainland to an island oddly known as Foulness. It's a track that has claimed many lives over the centuries, as the tides comes in faster than a person can run.

He also sails the ‘sea roads’ of the outer Hebrides in Scotland and journeys to Palestine, Tibet and Spain.

The book is an extraordinary meditation on how nature and stories connect people not only in the present but across time and cultures.